Lee Smith

When: Wed., March 23, 7 p.m. 2016

TUESDAY, MARCH 22–WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23

LEE SMITH

At first glance, Lee Smith's Dimestore: A Writer'sLife looks, sounds, and tastes like an escape to simpler times, when girls were girls and jogging wasn't something you did for sport. That's just what the celebrated Hillsborough author's new memoir is—but it's also so much more. Beyond a wholesome coming-of-age adventure set in bucolic Grundy, Virginia, it's a story about the fracturing and binding qualities of familial mental illness and the search for mad, enduring love, all wrapped tight in fifteen personal essays. Whatever you're looking for as a reader, you'll find it in the Dimestore. Hillsborough's Purple Crow Books hosts Smith at the Orange County Public Library on Tuesday, followed by a Quail Ridge Books-backed reading at the McKimmon Center on Wednesday. — Ryan-Ashley Anderson